Anonymous wrote:just let them stay home with excused absences. as long as they aren't creating a strain on school resources, go nuts. it's their education that they sacrifice.
yes, exactly. It's a win/win. Not sure why MCPS fought it so hard. There are kids who opt out of Family Life. Not a big deal.
i think it is because the religious were demanding alternative programming and babysitting for kids who can't be by themselves. If MCPS doesn't have to
provide that, then it's all good.
Another person didn’t bother me o read the case but still shoots off anyway. Doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what relief the parents sought. Allowing an excused absence would have saved so much time and money but now the County allowed things to be made much worse.
The county is not teaching respect and tolerance and this is segregation to separate kids. Parents have rights. You’d be upset if they choose a different direction to teach and you wanted different. The curriculum should be inclusive and it’s not.
You have no idea what I think about the curriculum because I didn’t post it. I observed that the poster doesn’t actually know the case details. It was a loser case and now makes things much more difficult for everyone.
The case showed how intolerant MCPS and some of the parents are about tolerance to others. They want tolerance and acceptance when it comes to their beliefs but not others. Thats not healthy for our kids. We live in a community with a huge amount of diversity and all that diversity should be respected, just not select groups.
Anonymous wrote:just let them stay home with excused absences. as long as they aren't creating a strain on school resources, go nuts. it's their education that they sacrifice.
yes, exactly. It's a win/win. Not sure why MCPS fought it so hard. There are kids who opt out of Family Life. Not a big deal.
i think it is because the religious were demanding alternative programming and babysitting for kids who can't be by themselves. If MCPS doesn't have to
provide that, then it's all good.
Another person didn’t bother me o read the case but still shoots off anyway. Doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what relief the parents sought. Allowing an excused absence would have saved so much time and money but now the County allowed things to be made much worse.
The county is not teaching respect and tolerance and this is segregation to separate kids. Parents have rights. You’d be upset if they choose a different direction to teach and you wanted different. The curriculum should be inclusive and it’s not.
You have no idea what I think about the curriculum because I didn’t post it. I observed that the poster doesn’t actually know the case details. It was a loser case and now makes things much more difficult for everyone.
The case showed how intolerant MCPS and some of the parents are about tolerance to others. They want tolerance and acceptance when it comes to their beliefs but not others. Thats not healthy for our kids. We live in a community with a huge amount of diversity and all that diversity should be respected, just not select groups.
So you're basically saying if you subscribe to a religion that promotes hate and intolerance, intolerance should be tolerated?
Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the practicalities of this … as I understand it, part of the issue is that MCPS insisted that the diversity books be integrated into the general ECE curriculum instead of in a standalone “health” unit. It’s a longstanding police that parents can opt kids out of health/sex-ed and pretty easy to operationalize by knowing which day all the “offending” content will be presented on.
but here, MCPS insisted that the books could be read whenever and wherever so the opt out would not be practical.
What concerns me now is that with MCPS being stubborn about it, they have now set up an environment where *anything* that touches on diversity has to be announced in advance to parents. So a teacher couldn’t even mention their same sex partner, or a book couldn’t even have any theme touching on gender at all, without it being planned in advance and notice provided.
Do I have that right?
The books were supplementary readings for elementary ELA (English Language Arts) instruction.
If you don't want your kid to learn about science or see female teachers, then you can keep your kids at home, just like these parents.
No no the SC says that my kid can opt out of anything I find religiously objectionable. That includes female teachers. The school must make a male-only space for mg child.
No, SCOTUS said they can keep the kids home. You can too.
Can you point out where it says that the school does not have to offer alternatives and that parents opting out will keep kids home? I’m just reading “opt out” but the decision is very long so maybe I’m missing that part about staying home.
There is nothing that said that, and there is nothing in the ruling that says or implies that parents have to keep their children home on the days objectionable lessons are taught.
If you don't want your kid to learn about science or see female teachers, then you can keep your kids at home, just like these parents.
No no the SC says that my kid can opt out of anything I find religiously objectionable. That includes female teachers. The school must make a male-only space for mg child.
No, SCOTUS said they can keep the kids home. You can too.
And all those troublesome intersex people, but why let biological reality get in the way of a dumb slogan?
That’s high school level biology/genetics curriculum, not kindergarten.
+1 just had this discussion with my 17 yr old DD who has a few gay friends, one who is her bff since 8. She said ES is not age appropriate to bring up these topics.
My older kid had a bff in ES whose parents were gay. It was just matter of fact for them - oh, my bff has two moms, and that was it. ES children don't delve too deeply into the whys and hows. They just accept it. There is no reason to teach them about the rest of the alphabet soup of genders at this age.
Ok. So you asked a cisgender, heterosexual teen, who presumably has cisgender heterosexual parents, and who also has a primarily cisgender and heterosexual peer group, and who has never been a parent, what she thought would be good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents? And you are offering this in the spirit of authority?
DP. Your question was “what’s good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents.” That’s not the charge of our elementary public school system. Getting confused about the mission of public school education is how we got into this situation.
It is absolutely the job of public education to reflect the everyday lives of students, and to create a welcoming environment in which they see their own reality reflected back to them. This contributes to classroom learning.
Then how about doing that for all groups, family styles and disabilities and not just your chosen favorite one.
That's the point! No one is saying only teach about LGBTQ families! Those of us who want "My Uncle's Wedding" read in school ALSO want other books reflecting diverse experiences. Lailah's Lunchbox, Jabari Jumps, Eyes the Kiss Corners, What Happened to You, The Girl who Thought in Pictures.
Why do you want to steal innocence from children? You should reflect on that during therapy.
You think teaching kids about the AAPI experience, or kids with disabilities, is "sealing their innocence?"
Wow.
Wow. This just shows the end agenda of the right-wingers. Nothing but perfect eugenic white families.
I’m not a right winger, I just think school should be for learning. Not your agenda.
Exactly, lets get back to basics. Let politics, personal beliefs, religion and all that to parents' outside the school. They spend more time on this nonsense than they do actual teaching.
Agreed. So why are people trying to force their personal agenda and religion on the school system by demanding the right to review and opt out of what books are read? Let the teachers teach and don't micromanage what books they use to do it or waste their time with having to figure out some complicated opt-out process for your special snowflake You can have your own religion and personal beliefs but you need to communicate those to your children outside of the schools, not tell the schools what they can and can't have in their books.
If you really read this ruling , this is actually another win from Montgomery County Public schools. Because they provided an opt out and they provided excused absences, teachers do not have to change their curriculum. They do not have to ban any books. They do not have to get rid of any of these books.
Yeah, right. You really think our schools have the staffing to pull kids out from classes every time a book like this gets read? They'll have to drop the books for everyone, it's just not feasible. (Or if they do manage to read them with opt outs and pull staff from their duties of actually helping kids to babysitting them because their parents are scared of a children's book, that's still an infuriating imposition of parents' religious beliefs on worsening the effectiveness of our school system. Keep your beliefs at home.)
They will keep it and do like holiday parties and pull out the kids to punish them. How about being culturally sensitive and aware and respecting other’s beliefs. Cultural sensitivity should go both ways and not just your one sided battle view. Keep your views at home if you want others too. Why do you get to impose your values on others but they aren’t allowed to say no? If they imposed their views on your kids, you’d want to be able to say no.
seriously, just have the religious kids in a separate class and on days where everyone else learns about gay people, they can pray instead. but they need to be separated in order to provide material for all kids.
What happens when parents their kids opt out of science class when evolution or anything related is taught?
Or science in general?
This is nuts
As parents, its their choice.
People cannot expect to be able to order their child's public school experience a la carte. If your child having a modern, secular, inclusive school experience bothers you, the "parental choice" option is to pick a different school for them or homeschool them.
Then change the curriculum to be respectful to all families and viewpoints.
This effectively means having religious extenuate dictate curricula. Since we aren’t doing that, they can just opt out of things and stay home.
It just means keeping pride puppy stuff out of Elementary school, No one has raised any objection of science. Let's not have hypothetical which is not based on reality. Tons of parents don't want pride puppy stuff for elemnetary school kids. Stick to reality.
+1
This ruling is the result of extreme overreach by quasi-religious activists in educational administration. You start teaching your faith-based beliefs as fact to young children, and people will reasonably push back. MCPS wildly overreached and this is the consequence.
I think this thread is fascinating because it shows once again how untethered DCUM is from where the vast majority of the country is at. The vast majority of kindergarten parents across the country are fine with two gay couples as background in books or whatever. But they are tired of classrooms decorated endlessly with rainbows when kids can’t read. They are tired of instructional content on how to use pronouns when math scores are in the toilet. They are tired of units on LGBTQ+ history when kids in third grade can’t spell. Nobody nationwide is objecting to science because there’s barely any science left to object to anyhow. Probably if we reached the point where the science curriculum was rigorous enough that people wanted to object to it, that would be a huge win overall.
DCUM is wailing and gnashing its teeth because DCUM is, as usual, in a bizarre and tightly sealed bubble. The rest of the country is celebrating this ruling, if they are thinking about it at all. I am always surprised at how extremely out-of-step DCUM posters are, but it has been a consistent truth for around a decade now.
Truth be told, I’m not sure how instep DCUM posters are with even Montgomery Country residents generally either.
I think some of you should get off DCUM and read other social media by folks in MoCo and out. You’ll see there are a great many people who are not happy about this ruling and were actually quite supportive of what MCPS was doing.
No credibility. You still think social media is real life. I am sure most people are upset about this decision in MoCo but not for the reasons you seem to think.
A) I didn’t state my reasons so quit making assumptions, B)DCUM is it slept a social media so people here and the views expressed are no more credible than any other social media, which brings us to C) the idea that looking in other places would actually provided a greater viewpoint.
credible
And all those troublesome intersex people, but why let biological reality get in the way of a dumb slogan?
That’s high school level biology/genetics curriculum, not kindergarten.
+1 just had this discussion with my 17 yr old DD who has a few gay friends, one who is her bff since 8. She said ES is not age appropriate to bring up these topics.
My older kid had a bff in ES whose parents were gay. It was just matter of fact for them - oh, my bff has two moms, and that was it. ES children don't delve too deeply into the whys and hows. They just accept it. There is no reason to teach them about the rest of the alphabet soup of genders at this age.
Ok. So you asked a cisgender, heterosexual teen, who presumably has cisgender heterosexual parents, and who also has a primarily cisgender and heterosexual peer group, and who has never been a parent, what she thought would be good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents? And you are offering this in the spirit of authority?
DP. Your question was “what’s good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents.” That’s not the charge of our elementary public school system. Getting confused about the mission of public school education is how we got into this situation.
It is absolutely the job of public education to reflect the everyday lives of students, and to create a welcoming environment in which they see their own reality reflected back to them. This contributes to classroom learning.
Then how about doing that for all groups, family styles and disabilities and not just your chosen favorite one.
That's the point! No one is saying only teach about LGBTQ families! Those of us who want "My Uncle's Wedding" read in school ALSO want other books reflecting diverse experiences. Lailah's Lunchbox, Jabari Jumps, Eyes the Kiss Corners, What Happened to You, The Girl who Thought in Pictures.
Why do you want to steal innocence from children? You should reflect on that during therapy.
You think teaching kids about the AAPI experience, or kids with disabilities, is "sealing their innocence?"
Wow.
Wow. This just shows the end agenda of the right-wingers. Nothing but perfect eugenic white families.
I’m not a right winger, I just think school should be for learning. Not your agenda.
Exactly, lets get back to basics. Let politics, personal beliefs, religion and all that to parents' outside the school. They spend more time on this nonsense than they do actual teaching.
Agreed. So why are people trying to force their personal agenda and religion on the school system by demanding the right to review and opt out of what books are read? Let the teachers teach and don't micromanage what books they use to do it or waste their time with having to figure out some complicated opt-out process for your special snowflake You can have your own religion and personal beliefs but you need to communicate those to your children outside of the schools, not tell the schools what they can and can't have in their books.
If you really read this ruling , this is actually another win from Montgomery County Public schools. Because they provided an opt out and they provided excused absences, teachers do not have to change their curriculum. They do not have to ban any books. They do not have to get rid of any of these books.
Yeah, right. You really think our schools have the staffing to pull kids out from classes every time a book like this gets read? They'll have to drop the books for everyone, it's just not feasible. (Or if they do manage to read them with opt outs and pull staff from their duties of actually helping kids to babysitting them because their parents are scared of a children's book, that's still an infuriating imposition of parents' religious beliefs on worsening the effectiveness of our school system. Keep your beliefs at home.)
They will keep it and do like holiday parties and pull out the kids to punish them. How about being culturally sensitive and aware and respecting other’s beliefs. Cultural sensitivity should go both ways and not just your one sided battle view. Keep your views at home if you want others too. Why do you get to impose your values on others but they aren’t allowed to say no? If they imposed their views on your kids, you’d want to be able to say no.
seriously, just have the religious kids in a separate class and on days where everyone else learns about gay people, they can pray instead. but they need to be separated in order to provide material for all kids.
What happens when parents their kids opt out of science class when evolution or anything related is taught?
Or science in general?
This is nuts
As parents, its their choice.
People cannot expect to be able to order their child's public school experience a la carte. If your child having a modern, secular, inclusive school experience bothers you, the "parental choice" option is to pick a different school for them or homeschool them.
Then change the curriculum to be respectful to all families and viewpoints.
This effectively means having religious extenuate dictate curricula. Since we aren’t doing that, they can just opt out of things and stay home.
It just means keeping pride puppy stuff out of Elementary school, No one has raised any objection of science. Let's not have hypothetical which is not based on reality. Tons of parents don't want pride puppy stuff for elemnetary school kids. Stick to reality.
+1
This ruling is the result of extreme overreach by quasi-religious activists in educational administration. You start teaching your faith-based beliefs as fact to young children, and people will reasonably push back. MCPS wildly overreached and this is the consequence.
I think this thread is fascinating because it shows once again how untethered DCUM is from where the vast majority of the country is at. The vast majority of kindergarten parents across the country are fine with two gay couples as background in books or whatever. But they are tired of classrooms decorated endlessly with rainbows when kids can’t read. They are tired of instructional content on how to use pronouns when math scores are in the toilet. They are tired of units on LGBTQ+ history when kids in third grade can’t spell. Nobody nationwide is objecting to science because there’s barely any science left to object to anyhow. Probably if we reached the point where the science curriculum was rigorous enough that people wanted to object to it, that would be a huge win overall.
DCUM is wailing and gnashing its teeth because DCUM is, as usual, in a bizarre and tightly sealed bubble. The rest of the country is celebrating this ruling, if they are thinking about it at all. I am always surprised at how extremely out-of-step DCUM posters are, but it has been a consistent truth for around a decade now.
Truth be told, I’m not sure how instep DCUM posters are with even Montgomery Country residents generally either.
I think some of you should get off DCUM and read other social media by folks in MoCo and out. You’ll see there are a great many people who are not happy about this ruling and were actually quite supportive of what MCPS was doing.
No credibility. You still think social media is real life. I am sure most people are upset about this decision in MoCo but not for the reasons you seem to think.
A) I didn’t state my reasons so quit making assumptions, B)DCUM is it slept a social media so people here and the views expressed are no more credible than any other social media, which brings us to C) the idea that looking in other places would actually provided a greater viewpoint.
credible
I have serious concerns about your comprehension abilities. Way to miss the point!
Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the practicalities of this … as I understand it, part of the issue is that MCPS insisted that the diversity books be integrated into the general ECE curriculum instead of in a standalone “health” unit. It’s a longstanding police that parents can opt kids out of health/sex-ed and pretty easy to operationalize by knowing which day all the “offending” content will be presented on.
but here, MCPS insisted that the books could be read whenever and wherever so the opt out would not be practical.
What concerns me now is that with MCPS being stubborn about it, they have now set up an environment where *anything* that touches on diversity has to be announced in advance to parents. So a teacher couldn’t even mention their same sex partner, or a book couldn’t even have any theme touching on gender at all, without it being planned in advance and notice provided.
Do I have that right?
The books were supplementary readings for elementary ELA (English Language Arts) instruction.
These weren’t sex ed books so why would they have been implemented as part of health? And why would we limit diversity to only Health in the curriculum? Do we only talk about kindness, clothing, culture during health? No.
Anonymous wrote:Sometimes the best way to normalize things is to *not* make such a big deal about it.
Like others have said, it’s 2025. Everyone on the planet can rattle off a long list of beloved gay celebs and many know a gay person IRL. Our state embraces gay marriage.
The fact that kids feel comfortable enough identifying as LGBTQ or non-binary or even as a furry demonstrates that our MoCo community is in fact a safe place.
So why drill down sooooo hard in the schools?
It’s not necessary…particularly at the K-5 level.
As a Gen X’er, I was raised in MoCo to embrace and celebrate diversity…and it seemed to work. My Gen X friends and coworkers have diverse friends groups and a “live and let live” mentality. It wasn’t until the post-George Floyd era that race and then gender identity became some bizarre tribal thing where everyone decamped into strictly defined—and let’s face it, self-segregated—groups followed by a hard push to drill down on special interest everything…including curricula.
Enough already.
Embrace and celebrity diversity. Easy peasy. But please focus on academics, civics, and just treating everyone with the same respect you would expect.
And all those troublesome intersex people, but why let biological reality get in the way of a dumb slogan?
That’s high school level biology/genetics curriculum, not kindergarten.
+1 just had this discussion with my 17 yr old DD who has a few gay friends, one who is her bff since 8. She said ES is not age appropriate to bring up these topics.
My older kid had a bff in ES whose parents were gay. It was just matter of fact for them - oh, my bff has two moms, and that was it. ES children don't delve too deeply into the whys and hows. They just accept it. There is no reason to teach them about the rest of the alphabet soup of genders at this age.
Ok. So you asked a cisgender, heterosexual teen, who presumably has cisgender heterosexual parents, and who also has a primarily cisgender and heterosexual peer group, and who has never been a parent, what she thought would be good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents? And you are offering this in the spirit of authority?
DP. Your question was “what’s good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents.” That’s not the charge of our elementary public school system. Getting confused about the mission of public school education is how we got into this situation.
It is absolutely the job of public education to reflect the everyday lives of students, and to create a welcoming environment in which they see their own reality reflected back to them. This contributes to classroom learning.
Then how about doing that for all groups, family styles and disabilities and not just your chosen favorite one.
That's the point! No one is saying only teach about LGBTQ families! Those of us who want "My Uncle's Wedding" read in school ALSO want other books reflecting diverse experiences. Lailah's Lunchbox, Jabari Jumps, Eyes the Kiss Corners, What Happened to You, The Girl who Thought in Pictures.
Why do you want to steal innocence from children? You should reflect on that during therapy.
You think teaching kids about the AAPI experience, or kids with disabilities, is "sealing their innocence?"
Wow.
Wow. This just shows the end agenda of the right-wingers. Nothing but perfect eugenic white families.
I’m not a right winger, I just think school should be for learning. Not your agenda.
Exactly, lets get back to basics. Let politics, personal beliefs, religion and all that to parents' outside the school. They spend more time on this nonsense than they do actual teaching.
Agreed. So why are people trying to force their personal agenda and religion on the school system by demanding the right to review and opt out of what books are read? Let the teachers teach and don't micromanage what books they use to do it or waste their time with having to figure out some complicated opt-out process for your special snowflake You can have your own religion and personal beliefs but you need to communicate those to your children outside of the schools, not tell the schools what they can and can't have in their books.
If you really read this ruling , this is actually another win from Montgomery County Public schools. Because they provided an opt out and they provided excused absences, teachers do not have to change their curriculum. They do not have to ban any books. They do not have to get rid of any of these books.
Yeah, right. You really think our schools have the staffing to pull kids out from classes every time a book like this gets read? They'll have to drop the books for everyone, it's just not feasible. (Or if they do manage to read them with opt outs and pull staff from their duties of actually helping kids to babysitting them because their parents are scared of a children's book, that's still an infuriating imposition of parents' religious beliefs on worsening the effectiveness of our school system. Keep your beliefs at home.)
They will keep it and do like holiday parties and pull out the kids to punish them. How about being culturally sensitive and aware and respecting other’s beliefs. Cultural sensitivity should go both ways and not just your one sided battle view. Keep your views at home if you want others too. Why do you get to impose your values on others but they aren’t allowed to say no? If they imposed their views on your kids, you’d want to be able to say no.
seriously, just have the religious kids in a separate class and on days where everyone else learns about gay people, they can pray instead. but they need to be separated in order to provide material for all kids.
What happens when parents their kids opt out of science class when evolution or anything related is taught?
Or science in general?
This is nuts
As parents, its their choice.
People cannot expect to be able to order their child's public school experience a la carte. If your child having a modern, secular, inclusive school experience bothers you, the "parental choice" option is to pick a different school for them or homeschool them.
Then change the curriculum to be respectful to all families and viewpoints.
This effectively means having religious extenuate dictate curricula. Since we aren’t doing that, they can just opt out of things and stay home.
It just means keeping pride puppy stuff out of Elementary school, No one has raised any objection of science. Let's not have hypothetical which is not based on reality. Tons of parents don't want pride puppy stuff for elemnetary school kids. Stick to reality.
+1
This ruling is the result of extreme overreach by quasi-religious activists in educational administration. You start teaching your faith-based beliefs as fact to young children, and people will reasonably push back. MCPS wildly overreached and this is the consequence.
I think this thread is fascinating because it shows once again how untethered DCUM is from where the vast majority of the country is at. The vast majority of kindergarten parents across the country are fine with two gay couples as background in books or whatever. But they are tired of classrooms decorated endlessly with rainbows when kids can’t read. They are tired of instructional content on how to use pronouns when math scores are in the toilet. They are tired of units on LGBTQ+ history when kids in third grade can’t spell. Nobody nationwide is objecting to science because there’s barely any science left to object to anyhow. Probably if we reached the point where the science curriculum was rigorous enough that people wanted to object to it, that would be a huge win overall.
DCUM is wailing and gnashing its teeth because DCUM is, as usual, in a bizarre and tightly sealed bubble. The rest of the country is celebrating this ruling, if they are thinking about it at all. I am always surprised at how extremely out-of-step DCUM posters are, but it has been a consistent truth for around a decade now.
Truth be told, I’m not sure how instep DCUM posters are with even Montgomery Country residents generally either.
I think some of you should get off DCUM and read other social media by folks in MoCo and out. You’ll see there are a great many people who are not happy about this ruling and were actually quite supportive of what MCPS was doing.
No credibility. You still think social media is real life. I am sure most people are upset about this decision in MoCo but not for the reasons you seem to think.
A) I didn’t state my reasons so quit making assumptions, B)DCUM is it slept a social media so people here and the views expressed are no more credible than any other social media, which brings us to C) the idea that looking in other places would actually provided a greater viewpoint.
credible
I have serious concerns about your comprehension abilities. Way to miss the point!
I didn’t miss anything, but maybe you did. A PP said that the rest of the country is celebrating this ruling and that those on DCUM are living in a bubble. I suggested that many people get off DCUM and look to the wider public and they will see that in fact the entirety of the rest of the country IS NOT celebrating this ruling. Some are and some aren’t. There are many people who are not celebrating.
Just because that fact doesn’t fit with your narrative doesn’t make it not credible.
Anonymous wrote:just let them stay home with excused absences. as long as they aren't creating a strain on school resources, go nuts. it's their education that they sacrifice.
yes, exactly. It's a win/win. Not sure why MCPS fought it so hard. There are kids who opt out of Family Life. Not a big deal.
i think it is because the religious were demanding alternative programming and babysitting for kids who can't be by themselves. If MCPS doesn't have to
provide that, then it's all good.
Another person didn’t bother me o read the case but still shoots off anyway. Doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what relief the parents sought. Allowing an excused absence would have saved so much time and money but now the County allowed things to be made much worse.
The county is not teaching respect and tolerance and this is segregation to separate kids. Parents have rights. You’d be upset if they choose a different direction to teach and you wanted different. The curriculum should be inclusive and it’s not.
You have no idea what I think about the curriculum because I didn’t post it. I observed that the poster doesn’t actually know the case details. It was a loser case and now makes things much more difficult for everyone.
The case showed how intolerant MCPS and some of the parents are about tolerance to others. They want tolerance and acceptance when it comes to their beliefs but not others. Thats not healthy for our kids. We live in a community with a huge amount of diversity and all that diversity should be respected, just not select groups.
So you're basically saying if you subscribe to a religion that promotes hate and intolerance, intolerance should be tolerated?
really the only way to tolerate intolerant beliefs is to have them have those intolerant views elsewhere, like at home on the opt out days.
the district sets the curriculum. people can opt out of parts of it if they are super religious. but the super religious don't get to dictate the curriculum. let them stay home.
Anonymous wrote:Sometimes the best way to normalize things is to *not* make such a big deal about it.
Like others have said, it’s 2025. Everyone on the planet can rattle off a long list of beloved gay celebs and many know a gay person IRL. Our state embraces gay marriage.
The fact that kids feel comfortable enough identifying as LGBTQ or non-binary or even as a furry demonstrates that our MoCo community is in fact a safe place.
So why drill down sooooo hard in the schools?
It’s not necessary…particularly at the K-5 level.
As a Gen X’er, I was raised in MoCo to embrace and celebrate diversity…and it seemed to work. My Gen X friends and coworkers have diverse friends groups and a “live and let live” mentality. It wasn’t until the post-George Floyd era that race and then gender identity became some bizarre tribal thing where everyone decamped into strictly defined—and let’s face it, self-segregated—groups followed by a hard push to drill down on special interest everything…including curricula.
Enough already.
Embrace and celebrity diversity. Easy peasy. But please focus on academics, civics, and just treating everyone with the same respect you would expect.
+1 I completely agree!
How do you embrace and celebrate diversity if we’re not allowed to read or discuss it in class? How do you discuss Civics without discussing the history that led to laws and practices being created or removed? How do you get kids to have respect for something without ever explaining it.
For example, a girl wears a hijab but some kid calls her weird and suggest she take it off. We tell the 2nd kid that’s not nice, but never explain to them that the girl and many others view it as an important part of their faith? But then when someone else comes along and starts screaming that they shouldn’t be allowed to wear hijabs, or that a young man can’t wear a Keffiyeh to graduation, then what? Will that 2nd kid have tolerance or will they return to, it’s weird and so it shouldn’t be allowed.? Meanwhile others will be allowed to wear a cross around their neck.
And all those troublesome intersex people, but why let biological reality get in the way of a dumb slogan?
That’s high school level biology/genetics curriculum, not kindergarten.
+1 just had this discussion with my 17 yr old DD who has a few gay friends, one who is her bff since 8. She said ES is not age appropriate to bring up these topics.
My older kid had a bff in ES whose parents were gay. It was just matter of fact for them - oh, my bff has two moms, and that was it. ES children don't delve too deeply into the whys and hows. They just accept it. There is no reason to teach them about the rest of the alphabet soup of genders at this age.
Ok. So you asked a cisgender, heterosexual teen, who presumably has cisgender heterosexual parents, and who also has a primarily cisgender and heterosexual peer group, and who has never been a parent, what she thought would be good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents? And you are offering this in the spirit of authority?
DP. Your question was “what’s good for queer kids and kids with same sex parents.” That’s not the charge of our elementary public school system. Getting confused about the mission of public school education is how we got into this situation.
It is absolutely the job of public education to reflect the everyday lives of students, and to create a welcoming environment in which they see their own reality reflected back to them. This contributes to classroom learning.
Then how about doing that for all groups, family styles and disabilities and not just your chosen favorite one.
That's the point! No one is saying only teach about LGBTQ families! Those of us who want "My Uncle's Wedding" read in school ALSO want other books reflecting diverse experiences. Lailah's Lunchbox, Jabari Jumps, Eyes the Kiss Corners, What Happened to You, The Girl who Thought in Pictures.
Why do you want to steal innocence from children? You should reflect on that during therapy.
You think teaching kids about the AAPI experience, or kids with disabilities, is "sealing their innocence?"
Wow.
Wow. This just shows the end agenda of the right-wingers. Nothing but perfect eugenic white families.
I’m not a right winger, I just think school should be for learning. Not your agenda.
Exactly, lets get back to basics. Let politics, personal beliefs, religion and all that to parents' outside the school. They spend more time on this nonsense than they do actual teaching.
Agreed. So why are people trying to force their personal agenda and religion on the school system by demanding the right to review and opt out of what books are read? Let the teachers teach and don't micromanage what books they use to do it or waste their time with having to figure out some complicated opt-out process for your special snowflake You can have your own religion and personal beliefs but you need to communicate those to your children outside of the schools, not tell the schools what they can and can't have in their books.
If you really read this ruling , this is actually another win from Montgomery County Public schools. Because they provided an opt out and they provided excused absences, teachers do not have to change their curriculum. They do not have to ban any books. They do not have to get rid of any of these books.
Yeah, right. You really think our schools have the staffing to pull kids out from classes every time a book like this gets read? They'll have to drop the books for everyone, it's just not feasible. (Or if they do manage to read them with opt outs and pull staff from their duties of actually helping kids to babysitting them because their parents are scared of a children's book, that's still an infuriating imposition of parents' religious beliefs on worsening the effectiveness of our school system. Keep your beliefs at home.)
They will keep it and do like holiday parties and pull out the kids to punish them. How about being culturally sensitive and aware and respecting other’s beliefs. Cultural sensitivity should go both ways and not just your one sided battle view. Keep your views at home if you want others too. Why do you get to impose your values on others but they aren’t allowed to say no? If they imposed their views on your kids, you’d want to be able to say no.
seriously, just have the religious kids in a separate class and on days where everyone else learns about gay people, they can pray instead. but they need to be separated in order to provide material for all kids.
What happens when parents their kids opt out of science class when evolution or anything related is taught?
Or science in general?
This is nuts
As parents, its their choice.
People cannot expect to be able to order their child's public school experience a la carte. If your child having a modern, secular, inclusive school experience bothers you, the "parental choice" option is to pick a different school for them or homeschool them.
Then change the curriculum to be respectful to all families and viewpoints.
This effectively means having religious extenuate dictate curricula. Since we aren’t doing that, they can just opt out of things and stay home.
It just means keeping pride puppy stuff out of Elementary school, No one has raised any objection of science. Let's not have hypothetical which is not based on reality. Tons of parents don't want pride puppy stuff for elemnetary school kids. Stick to reality.
+1
This ruling is the result of extreme overreach by quasi-religious activists in educational administration. You start teaching your faith-based beliefs as fact to young children, and people will reasonably push back. MCPS wildly overreached and this is the consequence.
I think this thread is fascinating because it shows once again how untethered DCUM is from where the vast majority of the country is at. The vast majority of kindergarten parents across the country are fine with two gay couples as background in books or whatever. But they are tired of classrooms decorated endlessly with rainbows when kids can’t read. They are tired of instructional content on how to use pronouns when math scores are in the toilet. They are tired of units on LGBTQ+ history when kids in third grade can’t spell. Nobody nationwide is objecting to science because there’s barely any science left to object to anyhow. Probably if we reached the point where the science curriculum was rigorous enough that people wanted to object to it, that would be a huge win overall.
DCUM is wailing and gnashing its teeth because DCUM is, as usual, in a bizarre and tightly sealed bubble. The rest of the country is celebrating this ruling, if they are thinking about it at all. I am always surprised at how extremely out-of-step DCUM posters are, but it has been a consistent truth for around a decade now.
Truth be told, I’m not sure how instep DCUM posters are with even Montgomery Country residents generally either.
I think some of you should get off DCUM and read other social media by folks in MoCo and out. You’ll see there are a great many people who are not happy about this ruling and were actually quite supportive of what MCPS was doing.
No credibility. You still think social media is real life. I am sure most people are upset about this decision in MoCo but not for the reasons you seem to think.
A) I didn’t state my reasons so quit making assumptions, B)DCUM is it slept a social media so people here and the views expressed are no more credible than any other social media, which brings us to C) the idea that looking in other places would actually provided a greater viewpoint.
credible
I have serious concerns about your comprehension abilities. Way to miss the point!
I didn’t miss anything, but maybe you did. A PP said that the rest of the country is celebrating this ruling and that those on DCUM are living in a bubble. I suggested that many people get off DCUM and look to the wider public and they will see that in fact the entirety of the rest of the country IS NOT celebrating this ruling. Some are and some aren’t. There are many people who are not celebrating.
Just because that fact doesn’t fit with your narrative doesn’t make it not credible.
For starters, your “wider public” is social, media which is no different than DCUM. Talk about someone who needs to get out and listen with an open mind.
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